I did four sessions this week on Cawcutts lake. Monday's 10:00 am start saw me walking around with the minimum of kit and a single rod for a few hours, more in the way of getting to know the place again than anything else.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays sessions were spent getting to know one particular swim where I had hooked and lost a fish on my first session the previous week.
I'd already figured out that I needed to nail the fish well if I was to get them in. With twelve feet of water to play with and most of them built like Mike Tyson the rig and lead system was important. There's a lot of clay mixed in with the gravel in this lake ( loam and stiff clay over gault and gravel) and so although you get a good thump when you hit the bottom there is a few inches of soup here and there. This is mostly made up of clay and the general detritus that gets broken down and lines the bottom of most lakes.
So I choose a lead clip with a two-ounce lead and a rather short (for me) six inch braided hooklink with an Ultra Sharp gripper modified with a little shrink-tube to turn the hook in. A large popup weight finished it off and the whole lot was held up with a Retro Baits 12mm Crazy nut Snail popup. The idea is of course that this rig on straightening, will turn the hook and nail the fish in the bottom lip, which it did everytime. The lead clip system gave me the lay that I wanted, thats the lead in any soup but the rig and mainline tubing all laying flat above it.
From the sessions I did I identified the contours of the swim and the areas I wanted to put my baits and worked on that. Baits were never left out too long at the start as I wanted to check on the crayfish activity (none), rig tangles (it happened twice) and the general state of the rig (weed, debris, clay). I fished with two rods only but even so this meant a fairly constant work rate and of course I made changes. Small two boilie sticks were added to stop tangles and rigs were moved around the swim.
Over the three sessions I fished a total of thirty hours with dawn starts, I managed three runs and netted all of them. This one was the largest at 27.8lb and I followed it up the next morning with a 16.8lb linear mirror.
It's a good start, I'm happy with that :-)